As fall has come, so has quiet to the Conrad Prebys Polar Bear Plunge. The management yard is being well used by Chinook. She certainly has her routine down: greet Tatqiq and Kalluk over the moat, find treats, eat treats, dip in pool, roll in dirt, completely cover entire body except for the white fur around eyes, go inside and see what my keeper is up to. Oh, too bad the nice clean bedrooms are now covered with muddy paw prints! Chinook really has perfected the art of the dirt roll! Still no confirmation of pregnancy, but also no behavioral change to indicate she is not pregnant. Our fingers are still tightly crossed.
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The view from our eagle observation point in the Sierra Juarez, Baja California, Mexico. A nest that was occupied last spring is located on the other side of the ridge in the left side of the picture.

I recently traveled with a few colleagues to north-central Baja California, Mexico, to conduct field research for the San Diego Zoo’s Golden Eagle Project (see previous post, Golden Eagle Helicopter Survey). A wind farm is being designed for future development in the Sierra Juarez, and the San Diego Zoo is involved with pre-construction research of habitat use and demographics of golden eagles. The objective of the project is to examine what parts of the mountain range are used by eagles and how and when they use each part. Our findings may help to minimize future interactions between eagles and turbines.
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The San Diego Zoo’s polar bear Chinook is keeping us all on the edge of our seats. As we move deeper into November, we are yet to see any definitive behavioral or physiological changes that would tell us that Chinook is pregnant…or that she’s not pregnant! With each passing day, we continue to document what she’s doing and how she’s doing it. Chinook’s den is ready, and we are listening to her and providing her with whatever she needs.
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Ron is in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, working with Polar Bears International. Read his previous post, Reaching Out for Polar Bears.

What I want to talk about to today is hope—hope for conservation, and hope for our planet even though it is facing unprecedented environmental challenges. I’m in Churchill in Manitoba, Canada, working with friends and collaborators at Polar Bears International. It’s a surreal experience going out on the Tundra Buggies and seeing wild polar bears. But underneath this joyful experience there is also sadness, because I know that this “polar bear capital” may one day have no polar bears. By now, most of us know that the polar bears are losing their sea-ice habitat and here, at the southern end of their range, they will disappear first. We’ve already lost almost a quarter of them in the past 15 years. In another 15, there may be no polar bears left in Churchill.
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Some of you have been asking about the panda cub’s vocalizations. You have wondered if he is loud, protesting mother’s grooming or nibbling activities. Some of you have expressed concern about the fact that Bai Yun is so frequently – and so long – away from the den these days. In fact, Bai Yun’s den departures and the cub’s vocal pattern are interrelated. Let me explain…
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Ron is in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, working with Polar Bears International. Read his previous post, The Polar Bears of Churchill.

This really is shaping up to be an amazing experience. Each day I go out on the Tundra Buggy, run by Frontiers North Adventures. Oh, and by the way, they are giving us a free pass on the Tundra Buggy and a room in the Tundra Lodge. They like what we are doing, trying to bring more attention to the plight of the polar bear. And it’s hard to imagine a species more deserving of attention than polar bears. They are the world’s largest terrestrial carnivores, and they are impressive.
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We got a very special surprise today at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC). One of our hard-working volunteers, Jim Brinson, was digging up an empty tortoise burrow to sterilize it and get it ready for a newly arriving tortoise when he came across a nest of eggs. Seeing the darkened color of the eggs and knowing that it is too late in the season for the eggs to hatch, he knew that the eggs were not viable (no tortoise babies in the eggs). This happens in nature from time to time. He put the eggs to the side and continued his task of digging in the dirt and sterilizing the burrow. But suddenly, as he was moving the dirt from the location of the burrow to the area beside it, he saw a small object covered in dirt fall from the shovel. He reached down to pick it up and saw that it was a fully formed hatchling!
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Russ Van Horn is currently in Peru to study Andean (spectacled) bears. Read his previous post, Bear Care in Conservation Terms.

In my last post, I rambled on about why conservation of Andean (or spectacled) bears, and conservation in general, matters, from a scientific viewpoint. This time around I’ll wade into some of the other reasons we work for conservation.

The e-mail that started me on these two posts highlighted a Web site showing some hunters with big game “trophies.” In this case, the trophies were taxidermy mounts of large mammals, mostly carnivores. In the background was a stuffed Andean bear, and the presence of this stuffed bear disturbed the e-mail’s writer and at least some of its readers.
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I saw a bear. Okay, I saw six. And it only took a couple of hours. I’ve been working with bears for many years now, and this is not what I’m used to. I’ve worked most extensively with giant pandas, and it took me years to see a panda in the wild. Recently, I started working with Andean (or spectacled) bears and, with a lot of sweat and hard work (and the help of an experienced collaborator), managed to see ONE in Peru (see post The Bear Goes Over the Mountain). But here, polar bears are everywhere! For now.

I’m in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, known as the polar bear capital of the world. I’m here as a guest of my friends and collaborators (and supporters!) at Polar Bears International. This is a terrific organization, and they have given me a terrific opportunity. More on that later. The bears are beautiful! I can’t wait to share more about the bears in my next posts.
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KVBC Channel 3 shot their morning show “Waking Up with the Wagners” live from the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC) today! Mojave Max and Ethel (see post Desert Tortoises: Lucy and Ethel) made their final appearances of the season. It’s cold here in the Las Vegas Valley, so they will soon be settling in for their winter brumation.

We also introduced a family of 18 tortoises, ranging from hatchlings to adults, that all came to us through our Desert Tortoise Hotline from the same home and were not in very good health; it gave us the perfect opportunity to encourage people to surrender their pet desert tortoises to the Clark County Desert Tortoise Hotline here in southern Nevada so we can rehabilitate the tortoises and eventually release the healthy ones into the desert to help recover the species. We are confident that all 18 tortoises will be successfully rehabilitated by this time next year, and maybe even sooner.
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